


Primera

by ishipthemsogoddamnhard



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Cuba, Established Relationship, Established Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Kissing, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Murder Husbands, Nostalgia, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Will's becoming, mentions of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 05:46:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10938231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishipthemsogoddamnhard/pseuds/ishipthemsogoddamnhard
Summary: More than a year post-fall, Will reflects on the journey of 'firsts' that was his becoming. Hannibal gives him another one to add to the list in the form of a rare gift...or two. Introspective angst, feels and fluff.





	Primera

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission which didn't make it into the anthology.
> 
> Thanks to my betas fragile-teacup and super_queer_hannibal_obsession :)

Will surfaced from sleep as the gauzy green curtain at the open balcony door billowed inwards towards the bed. He was already aware that Hannibal wasn’t beside him but his heart didn’t skip in panic as it used to - no doubt he was only making breakfast. Will stretched, tangling more in the cool sheets, and wondered when the first day had been that he had awoken and felt none of his old fear. No longer the price of his imagination. There was no real way of remembering, of course, but that thought triggered another - first. The first. It was May 1st and their first ‘anniversary’. It just seemed so...normal a thing. The date was nothing more than a dumb coincidence that drew a smile from Will, a slow and contented stretch of one cheek.

 

Will was positive he only knew because Hannibal had mentioned it a few weeks ago, wondering aloud how long it was that they had really been _together_. They had discussed - bickered gently, really - when they were counting from, finally settling on the night Will had come to Hannibal and asked to be taken to bed. There had been the hazy, painful months before that while they both healed, but Hannibal had assured him that particular day had been May 1st, not quite meeting Will’s eyes. They had both known his confidence that this date was correct had only a little to do with his eidetic memory, and a lot to do with his being an old sap; and damn it all but that had made Will a little tight in the chest. 

 

As he lay there watching the palm trees sway lightly in the breeze, with his head turned to the morning sun, Will lost himself to nostalgia. Had it really been a whole year? More than four years since Florence? Almost six that they had been in each other’s lives? Hannibal often spoke of the change in Will he had observed, if not cultivated, that brought them to the cliff’s edge that night in more ways than one. His ‘becoming’ was how he melodramatically described it, which always made Will scoff. In all honesty, it wasn’t all that simple. None of it was. There had been so many firsts, and so much importance held in all those changes, that it was just as hard to believe it had really been so long, as it was to remember a life without Hannibal in it. 

 

Will had told him so in the Uffizi Gallery, and multiple times since, and it was entirely true. There was Will before Hannibal and after. The Red Dragon had merely been responsible for finally cutting one version of himself free from the other. If he had had any kind of ‘becoming’, it had been set in motion long before Dolarhyde fired his gun...

 

Will thought about the first day they’d met; about how pissed he had been to have this pretentious psychiatrist asshole involved in his case, or anywhere near him at all really. He remembered being irritated all day and telling himself it was Hannibal, just Hannibal as a person, who was responsible. Truth was, it was the insight he seemed to have. It was how, even barely allowing him to meet his eyes, this man had seen into his soul. How he had seen something Will kept deeply hidden, something he barely acknowledged, and laid it out in plain English. Will had been defensive for weeks and he huffed a little laugh at the memory, shaking his head at how truly surreal it was to have ended up here from there. 

 

The first part of his becoming had been accepting that he did need to be understood, that his isolation wasn’t making him happy.

 

Will cast his mind back to Hobbs - his first kill; and Eldon Stammets - the first person he had _wanted_ to kill for revenge. The way it had felt to say out loud all the awful truths he had kept buried for so long... but even then he had barely registered how much of a relief that was. To hear his own voice speak of his pleasure in killing. To have Hannibal not judge him, but explain and comfort and help him instead. To have someone empathise so strongly with _him_. They’d both had enough time to talk about those days to know that, while they weren’t on the same page with their intentions, they were on the same page in their souls. 

 

The second part of his becoming had been when he’d stopped pretending there wasn’t darkness within him, for the first time in his adult life. 

 

Will remembered the first time he called Hannibal out, and the shock of his response. The offer of a friend who knew him inside out. That became the first time he wasn’t yet ready to be that friend...not the way Hannibal wanted anyway. Will thought about the mess they had made as he’d pushed back against this fallout, fuelled by blind need for retaliation. Hannibal’s entire orchestration of freeing him from the prison he had confined him to. Will rubbed at his eye, sleepy but resigned to recalling unavoidable, complicated memories. 

 

The third part of his becoming had been understanding that Hannibal did understand his darkness. That he embraced it even if Will did not.

 

Will thought of his first time wanting to kill a man - Clarke Ingram - this time out of pure desire for the act; of listening but not ever really _hearing_ as Hannibal told him truth after truth; of jealous and childish tit-for-tat swipes at each other that left so many others wounded inside and out. He thought next of the quiet certainty that fell over him as he beat the life from Randall Tier, of the way he felt laying him on Hannibal’s table like an offering.

 

The fourth part of his becoming was knowing, deep in his soul, that the spark of violence flashing within him was not wholly feigned.

 

Even now, a sensation of something like shame crept up Will’s neck as he tried to recall his state of mind back then, blushing for real as he suddenly remembered the the way his anxious dreams had become coloured with a new shade. His body betraying him as his head focused only on revenge. He had never told a soul about this, lying even to himself, and Hannibal. Killing the man was far from the only thing he had fantasised about doing with his hands, and it had sickened him. Clouded his vision to all but resistance, even after the first time he had given serious thought to caving. It had cost them both so dearly.

 

Will laid a hand on his belly, warm with sleep, and ran his fingertips over the scar. If he had but one regret... He rolled onto his side to face the idyllic beach and hoped, as he often did in quiet moments, that wherever she was she finally had the same peace they did. 

 

The fifth part of his becoming had been knowing he made all the wrong choices. Seeing the true picture of them, but only after Hannibal had already thrown it into the fire, after months of being confined to bed tormented, and having no choice but to learn to live with the consequences. Or so he had told himself, even as he roamed Europe to find him.

 

Clearly not all of the stops on their journey were pleasant. Ultimately _thrice_ betrayed and betrayer. Or perhaps just two lonely, ‘unconventional’ people who hadn’t realised that they belonged together. Maybe Hannibal had. Will hadn’t been close to being ready to acknowledge his true feelings any of those times - first rejecting the mere suggestion that he was like Hannibal; then rejecting the option of running off with him on principle; and finally rejecting the knowledge that he really wanted nothing more. It had been completely unbearable but while Will now got the meaning of identically different, Hannibal had handled it...poorly. He often spoke of how badly he had missed him while Will was locked up, while in Italy, and while in jail himself. Will sighed...he genuinely hadn’t even considered the man capable of emotions like the ones he now saw exhibited daily, but it was so hard to be resentful when you were no self-aware angel yourself.

 

Will thought of his wife, wistful smile flickering back to life. Huge-hearted Molly and the lengths he had gone to in order to convince the world and himself that he was normal. Playing the part of a man who had put it all behind him, who had survived Hannibal, when all he had really done was push him away because the desire to pull him closer was too hard to swallow. God, he had been so stupid. 

 

His breath caught as he thought of the first time walking into that room at the BSHCI, the first time seeing each other in three years. Will’s carefully constructed house of cards had toppled with just one look through that glass. Every single, tiny ghost and thought and voice that he had buried all those years, drinking himself to sleep after every letter, so as to forget the longing that punched him in the gut with every word. Every one of them broke free that day. Hannibal had done the only thing he knew how to get Will to pay attention before it was too late. He would be forever grateful that Molly and Walter were relatively unharmed, but he had known there was nothing real for him there after simply seeing the look on Hannibal’s face. Still, Will had given him hell because the alternative meant there was no going back...

 

The sixth part of his becoming had been saying the word ‘love’ out loud, when denial was simply no longer an option.

 

Will rubbed his neck as he pondered how many times they had said ‘I love you’ since then. Logic and love have no business together. It had only been a matter of time after that session with Bedelia. The escape was something he had told himself was a means to an end. The end of Hannibal. Really it was the end of the lies, the end of the delusions and illusions. 

 

The seventh part of his becoming had been a more specific moment. It was looking up to see Francis getting the better of Hannibal, just as planned, and his gut telling him a simple ‘no’. It had been looking into his eyes, feeling his heart pound, knowing, seeing and it all being far too much. Bursting through the veil and finding himself standing on the other side too. It had been the unwillingness to attempt to survive separation and instead casting them into the hands of fate, only to find themselves still conjoined.

 

There had been nothing left to become after that except healed, and then...companions. They had hurt each other enough for several lifetimes and now they would at least try to inhabit one in which they didn’t. Somehow, it worked. It worked well, and Cuba couldn’t have been more removed from those other realities. 

 

One thing remained unshakable. The tension, that give and take they naturally had, started to build back up with nowhere to go. Will had started to look at Hannibal and wonder, if he loved him like Bedelia said, why didn’t he say it? Show it? The dreams returned with a vengeance, the intense need for him to just…do something. He didn’t. Hannibal wanted Will to go to him, if they were to ever take it there. The first time he had really, honestly let Will decide his own path.

 

The last part of Will Graham’s becoming had been the night, emboldened by wine and tropical air, when he had taken Hannibal’s wine from his hand, crawled into his lap and claimed his mouth. They had kissed for everything they had never known how to say, for the pain and the joy and the wasted time, until Will was begging a tearful Hannibal to take him right there. Their shared becoming began, first kiss and first time, and it was everything Will had never known he had always wanted. Giving in to being one, instead of fighting it. It was beautiful. It still got him going to think about, but he decided he’d save that for later...

 

Amazingly, that was one whole year ago. A year during which admittedly, they had killed again, but you could count the times on one hand. Will always chose the moment, they would never quite be the same beast, but maybe that was okay. Will licked his lip, still pensive. He was almost ready to drag himself out of bed when Hannibal appeared, but it wasn’t food he came bearing.

 

“Happy Anniversary.” He looked warmly at Will as he sat up excitedly.

 

“You got me a puppy?” Will swallowed. This was about the last thing he expected, that he would ever have a dog again. 

 

“I was tired of feeling guilty that you didn’t have one.” Hannibal smirked. “You stare at dogs when we are out, the way some men stare at women.”

 

“Jealous?” Will grinned as he took the little brown and white bundle from him. She was a beagle and this young was nothing but huge eyes and warm fat little body, that she nuzzled into Will’s chest. He was making noises of endearment at her that almost had Hannibal rolling his eyes before Will grabbed Hannibal’s shirt and pulled him in for a quick kiss. “Thank you, she’s perfect.” He cooed.

 

“Well...she’s only part of your gift.” Hannibal explained, gesturing at the tiny animal. If Will didn’t think it was impossible, he could have sworn the man seemed awkward. His hand felt something attached to the purple ribbon around her neck just as he was about to ask what Hannibal was talking about. He frowned quizzically and looked down. It was a small piece of paper folded into the origami heart Will was all too familiar with. 

 

Will glanced up at him with raised brows. “Really?” 

 

Hannibal preened but ignored him. “Just open it.” His dark eyes glinted.

 

Will chuckled, this level of sappiness was unlike even Hannibal. He carefully unfolded the layers as the older man sat down on the bed, and his eyes quickly scanned the perfect script:

 

_My name is Aruna but Dr. Lecter believes I would like it if my parents were married; thus there is one important decision that is yours to make…_

 

Will pressed his lips together, heart fluttering wildly and leaving him a little lost for words. He lifted his head shyly to meet Hannibal’s gaze, absently petting the dog’s soft ear. It wasn’t the first time Will had seen that quietly hopeful expression, but it was probably the first time Hannibal would offer him a new life and he would say ‘yes’. 

There would be so many more ‘firsts’ in their life together but nothing like this moment. Will could only smile softly and nod, leaning in to join his mouth to Hannibal’s before it all totally overwhelmed him. The strengthening sun cast a strip of light across the skin of Will’s bare side and matched the warmth inside him as they kissed. Maybe this was more like what a becoming felt like. Radiant.

**Author's Note:**

> Aruna is a Hindi name meaning 'radiance' <3


End file.
